See also

There are a lot of twists and turns in this week’s Elementary, perhaps more so than usual. That’s partly because there’s a lot going on in this episode, including a double homicide, the ominous (as always) return of Morland Holmes, and the less ominous return of Eugene the Morgue Man. Still, “Ain’t Nothing Like the Real Thing” manages to balance all the stories and give each a significant amount of time — even Eugene, who’s the subject of a quick pop-in from Joan, confirming that he’s doing pretty well and getting closer to coming back to the job.

After Joan checks in with Eugene at a bar where he’s performing stand-up comedy just for the hell of it, she heads to a bookstore to meet with Emile to get an update on Morland Holmes and his potentially shady behavior. Sure enough, he’s found a few things. He gives Joan some copies of Morland’s financials that show wire transfers to Russians within the justice system, including wardens, cops, and judges. It’s clear that Morland is looking for Krasnov, the man who escaped from prison only a few weeks ago.

Meanwhile, Sherlock is called to a double homicide. He sees a fairly typical case of a carjacker and driver shooting and killing one another, but knows there must be more to it than that because the whole things looks staged. The gun in the truck is still in the driver’s hand, which doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, and as Marcus points out, the carjacker has a gun in his right hand despite his belt suggesting that he’s left-handed.

When Sherlock discovers a camera discarded in a dumpster nearby, he takes a look at the photos and finds out that the two men appeared to be staging a different murder before they were, you know, actually murdered. The man hunched over in the driver seat is Jared, a guy who owns a land development company. The “carjacker” is Butch, a war vet with a few petty crimes in his past. It looks like the two were staging a hit and then everything went wrong when a real hit happened. So, who wanted Jared dead?

Well, that’s a complicated question. Jared’s business partner Davis can’t think of anyone who would want Jared dead, even as the two were suing the government because of a fracking ban that diminished the value of a property they purchased. When the detectives question Jared’s wife though, she can immediately think of someone who would want him dead: Davis. She says that Davis was refusing to sell off a property that they owned and would threaten Jared whenever it came up.

Things get even more complicated when Sherlock and Marcus question Butch’s girlfriend Roxanne and find bloody shirts in the garbage. Well, they’re not exactly bloody because it’s all fake. In other words, Butch was trying to figure out what was going to look more realistic in the photos, which also means that someone hired Butch to kill Jared. So how did both of them end up dead, and who originally hired Butch?